TikTok user doxes random people and gets away with it

The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech

Earlier this year another victim Matthew (I agreed to not publish his full name) was wearing a brightly patterned shirt and a reflective visor while waving a Pride flag. A social media content creator popular on TikTok and Instagram interviewed Matthew as he pointed a microphone into Matthew’s face. In a video the creator filmed, the two bantered back and forth in the short 26 second clip, including about actor Pedro Pascal.

Matthew never provided the interviewer his full name or any identifiable personal information. It was a fleeting moment that ordinarily would have ended there. But it didn’t.

Shortly after, the facial recognition TikTok account responded to the original video with their own. The video shows the user taking several screenshots of Matthew. Then they opened a website called Pimeyes that lets anyone run facial recognition searches. They uploaded the screenshots, selected Matthew’s face from the photos, and hit search.

Nearly immediately, Pimeyes provided a hit: a photo of Matthew on his employer’s website. The person scrolls down the employer’s website and easily finds Matthew’s full name. They then copy and paste that name into Instagram and find Matthew’s profile. To punctuate their public unmasking of a stranger on the internet, the TikTok creator screenshots Matthew’s Instagram, as if—mission complete. At the time of writing, the TikTok revealing Matthew’s name, employer, and personal social media account has around 676,000 views. The comments are a mix of people making sexual jokes about Matthew, some marveling at the capability of Pimeyes, and others asking whether the practice is even legal.

This is why you don't use your IRL name or upload your face on the Internet, people.

TikTok for its part has not removed the facial recognition account. Matthew told me he reported the account in July through TikTok’s normal mechanism but received no response. Since then, the account has uploaded at least a dozen more pieces of content.

Ben Rathe, a spokesperson from TikTok, told me TikTok has reviewed the account and concluded it does not violate the social network's terms of use. This is because in TikTok's eyes the account is only using publicly available information, rather than information which may be considered private such as a phone number.

I'm not surprised at all. TikTok has repeatedly shown a complete disregard for privacy in the past12345. Why would they care now?

At least some of the commentators on the TikTok account’s videos continue to push back against the practice, albeit while still feeding it engagement. “This is genuinely scary,” reads one.

It's nice to hear that some people still have their head on the shoulders.

  1. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/4/22518435/tiktok-privacy-policy-biometric-data-collection-faceprint-voiceprint↩

  2. https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/heres-data-tiktok-collects-its-users↩

  3. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/11/tiktok-executive-admits-australian-users-data-accessed-by-employees-in-china↩

  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20230610023646/https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/06/former-tiktok-executive-says-chinese-communist-party-members-had-god-mode-entry-to-tiktok-data↩

  5. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/tiktok-fires-4-employees-who-used-internal-data-to-spy-on-journalists↩